Hmm sadly despite the Turbine grudgery around I am going to try dungeons and dragons. I mean there were elements that were good and original in ac2, and this I look forward to seeing in dungeons and dragons.
Lotr has apparently taken more of the ac2 developers but it doesn't look so good.

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Originally posted by nomadian

Not meant as a flame but thats the worst argument you could come up with. Uninspired!, AC2 is quoted as having the best combat system in all games, it was the rest of the game that let it down.

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I agree that the combat system was the most solid part of AC2. The concept was good. The execution was very meh. Consensus seems to be that in practice it didn't succeed in engaging the player's interest, requiring actual feedback, or providing enough differentiation between play style. I've seen many comments to the effect that mage, archer, and melee felt largely the same to play. I did like those Lugian engineers, though.

It was definitely on the right track. I believe CoH came closer to the sort of fast-paced reactive group combat they were shooting for. I'd argue that removing the "almost real physics" of AC1 projectiles was definitely a step back, though. In AC1, you could dodge arrows and projectile spells. PVP tended to FPS style circle-strafing and ducking behind cover.

Sad news with this but not surprising.

I was a Cher Chaste, Monarch of OoO (Oracles of Order), from the first week of AC2 & played for around 3 years. I loved the game, I loved my minions.

The game had lots to offer & I wish they were incorporated into more games. Being an emote queen, I TRULY enjoyed the different dance style, sounds of character laughter & the music we could play as a band with our looted instruments! All this along with the background sounds & the awesome graphics was a big part of the game that so many of us enjoyed as passive play.

I really lost interest when they continued to nerf our characters. Then when they changed the crafting aspect of the game, I gave up & didn't continue subscribing to the game. I believe at one time I was #3 crafter on our server of Frostfell (Formerly Solclaim then was consolidated).

At this time, I still hold my account on AC1 on Solclaim. I love my mage there & enjoy playing her occasionally. My grown children play the game also. I am losing interest in this game tho because the graphics have become so crude, compared to other MMORPG.

Just a word about XP chains & Macro Bots; XP chains are bad enough for any game, macro bots are poison. If people are not stopped & their account(s) permanently banned, any game will suffer for those of us who choose to obey the rules.

I'm truly sad to see AC2 has failed. Along with many, we felt it was doomed from the beginning from too much lag & nerf-happy programmers. I'm now hesitant to buy anything made by Turbine.

Farewell to a good game. Thank you for all the wonderful memories.

Live well with yourself, walk well with your friends, hunt well against your enemies! ~*~ Cher Chaste ~*~

First off, i have played damn near every mmo out there that has gotten big big reviews, or tons of hype form everyone.... and all i can say is there is nothing out there that is even close to AC2, i have played since release of that game. Nothing has come close to it in graphics, or "fun factor" i mean that game was just ahead of its time, taht and all the nerfs, but who freaking cares about nerfs, jesus just play the damn game and learn to get better you damn babies, anyway i was just wondering what mags they guy was talking about that he "advertized" in, cause i know before AC2 came out there was about half a page of reviews in gamepro magazine, and that is all i ever saw of AC2 ever advertized.... if he would be so kind as to send me links to all the places he advertized i would love to see..... cause i know i havent seen anything on any gaming site ever....that was the only down fall to AC2, i dont think the creators really liked the game from the start and just meh screw it, lets see how long it can last ....prolly all for a bet, i really hate turbine for this, they did nothing to help, ya there was an expantion, and it rocked .....but still, when i was trying to get my copy, i called many of the big game dealers, bestbuy, gamestop, any place that would have computer games, and there was only one store that had even been told about it, and it was EB games.....so it just shows ya they didnt do a damn thing to get word out about this game..... not really sure if tha tmakes since or not, just to mad to really care but anyway i am very honored to have played the best mmo out there, there will never be another game like AC2, i am very sad that not many ppl got to enjoy what so few did, but anyway im out to go find somthing to play, and drink away the memories of AC2 closing, see yall later

-Neo-Damerus

I really worry about the precdent being established here.

A few months ago a challenged title from an unknown european publisher closed down right after release effectively stealing funds from thier subscribers.

Now a well established publisher effectively mimics this practice.

I find this disturbing and question the moral and legal standpoint of it.

To release a new title or expansion and then turn around and close down the servers raises some questions of ethics in the industry.

It goes to table to ask did Turbine know they were closing the game down before they released the expansion and pushed it thru with the intent to defraud thier subscribers out of more money?

From the spokespersons comments in this interview it seems they did indeed entertain the idea before the expansion release. They seem to be saying the expansion was released in an effort to curb this demise but that it failed.

It seems to me that turbine has an obligation to thier subscribers especially the ones who had paid out for this now defunct expansion. At the very least they could offer these people some form of recompense.

Beta accounts for the upcoming Turbine titles or possible ever a free copy of the new games when they release. 

The saddest part is that it would seem as though this person doesn't realize that Sequels in games are just like movies... some bad, some good.  the ones that end up being bad are the ones where they don't stay with the concepts of the original that made it so popular in the first place.  When you go out and recreate something like they did with AC2.  You are bound to alienate your already fanbase and possible not gain much considering the options in AC2.  You only have 3 races and you are very limited in skills to learn compared to it's predecessor and the whole game was/or still is really anal retentive about grouping unlike AC1 where both are equally enjoyable.  It didn't have the highly evolving quests that people were used to in AC1.  Not one lever or any puzzles to figure out.  then the most boring part is the step by step quest log.  I know it seems to become a new norm of the latest games but i don't like that aspect at all with any of the new games.  Give us simple hints but don't tell us every step of the way what all we need to do exactly. 

But i guess folks just need their hands held while they do games these days... /shrug

But this goes to show like my original point, once you find that niche and you have a good set of features then stick with them, maybe fine tune some but keep them for the most part.  Then just work on content and gameplay.  Sequels don't have to bomb... If you are a good game developer period you would understand that.  When making a game online or even offline... The devs have to keep in mind what makes people want to play games over and over.  Stuff that is addicting... i.e. in AC1, one of my favorite aspects about that game was the random loot generator, you would end up with some of the most unique items in the game.  Some pretty nice and some pretty goofy.  But nevertheless, it's that easter egg syndrome. 

Tinkering in AC1, that didn't make it to AC2... people who play AC1 love this aspect, why shouldn't they?  you can tinker your gear to YOUR liking.  Endless possibilities... We don't have to spend boring hours crafting junk just to craft more junk.  Funny how this is an aspect that is similar to even that of Diablo 2 that so many liked... you can augment your items with gems.  It's another form of tinkering, and people love that aspect.   Why it didn't make it to AC2 off the start boggles the mind.

there is hardly anything feature wise that resembles AC1...

While i'm at it to further the point... Look at EQ2, sure it made some pretty big changes, but the core game is still there just in a different format.  It still uses the same stat design with a more user-friendly interface and such.  But that is just fine tuning...  Many of the same classes are there, but they have a new way of going about doing it.  It's an adventure rpg in EQ1 and yet it stays that way, even more anally so in EQ2.  AC1 is an adventure rpg, but yet again they 180'd out on this aspect also.

If for one second those devs at AC2 would take off their bottleneck glasses and try and open their mind to what works and what doesn't.. then they would do 100% better.  Sure throw in some new aspects, but take some advice from people who have made successful sequels.  Don't change every single aspect of your original on your first sequel.  1/3 old, 1/3 updated/fine tuned, 1/3 new... rules to live by when doing a sequel.

As a beta tester that was never able to log in once due to bugs and a player at release who made his best to get the devs to understand how badly they were alienating players, all I can say is good riddance, this game deserved nothing less than to fail.

You had assembled one of the worst development team around on what should have been a game very close to Everquest in terms of suscribers, but yet, after constantly ignoring player comments, ideas and suggestion while instead concentrating on jerking us around, you got what was coming to you.

A big thumbs up to all players that quit the game over the years, we all had a small part in taking them down!

I agree with some of the posts. The Developers are the reason for the game's fall. Honestly, Jefferey needs to fire thier asses for screwing the game. If the developers from AC2 are allowed to be on the dev teams for DnD online, or LotR online, those games will bomb. I enjoyed the concept of the game, but not the end result. And Turbine's idea of not giving out the server info for AC2 is another failing. This means those players would have two choices, AC1, or going to a different company. And you don't get those customers back normally. In my opinion, this might be the start of the fall of Turbine as a company. There last few games havn't been as good, and now instead of fixing the problems with the game and listening to thier customers on why they disliked the game, they scrapped a game that they could of used to learn from thier mistakes. With these compounding mistakes, I've suggested selling turbine stock to all my friends that have it. This company is going the way of the dodo if they don't shape up.

-- Kaelas Askavi

-- Kaelas@direcway.com

-- Beta tester, MMORPG player

P.S. And as for not releasing the server code. This is the worst part of the plan. If they release the server code, then AC2 players continue to play, further develop the game. And you as the company watch, see what's getting the players in content wise. Then you do one thing, Make AC3 with a new engine, and the content people want. Like one server, geography modification ability, etcetera. Now instead, they loose the ability to get thier name out further, and end up loosing customers in the long run.

Ac 2 was a joke. It was nothing like the OG Asherons call. If you are going to make a sequel their has to be something in common. The craft only part sucked. The slow running sucked. The game was not fun.

Reason ac1 is still around is because its fun to play. You can log in DT and kill or be killed. Or log on the carebear servers and emote to your hearts delight and do pklight.

Seems most these mmorpg's suck now anyways. Make big promises and always fall short having you think why I am paying for this shit.

I once drooled over AC 2. Then I played it. It was "ok" but then I had a run in with Microsoft Customer Support. I lost my credit card. The game billing failed, because I had to cancel my card. I decided I didn't want to renew right away so I waited a few months before signing back up. When I tried to do that I was extremely rudely informed that about fifty dollars had been sent to collections. I was told that my CD Key had been banned and I would have to purchase the game new again in order to play.

Hmm... Other MMO's I was subscribed to at the time gladly took me back...

They wonder why their customer base shriveled. Sure it may have not been the only reason but having subscription policies which seemingly could have only come from the third reich did NOT help them at all.

Did you know if you were unable to pay they would keep billing you and rack up debt?

Did you know if you didnt play for a little while your CD Key was erased/banned?

Every other MMO keeps characters as long as they can. They bill you at the BEGINNING of your month. That way if there are billing issues your account simply becomes inactive.

This game deserved to fail if for no other reason than their abhorrent customer service and typical Microsoft greed. Turbine will do much better now that their two new games will have NOTHING to do with Microsoft.

Guess what I did? I got a FREE copy of the game. I played for my FREE month as much as I possibly could. Then canceled my account before I was billed. NOW I AM DANCING ON THIS PIECE OF SHIT'S GRAVE!!!

I like Turbine and look forward to their future projects but... Good riddance!

Does no one else care that they dodged the question concerning the number of players at the time of shut-down?

I am curious as to how many( or how little) players it takes to close down an MMO. That way I can keep my eyes open.

Well first I will start with the good before the bad.

The Good:

To start off I would like to say that I was a devoted fan to AC1 for almost 4 years and some of my best video game memories are of AC1 with my friends on pvp darktide server.  Ac1 was such a great game with depth, lore, exploration, items, and character creation.  When you built your char you planned it from the get go and when you where done you where proud of your accomplishments unlike many of the games out there to day.  Also AC1 was the best MMORPG PVP engine to date in my own opinion and nothing has even come close to there pvp engine where you can actually dodge spells and arrows :O really some developers need to crack open a dictionary and look up the word Dodge and figure out what it means again.  Anyhow I had nothing but high praises for AC1 before it started getting stupid with bad patch after bad patch.  This is where I think they went wrong with ac2.  In AC 1 they almost never nurfed anything.  They just kept on putting higher and higher content in.  Stronger and stronger content until it was unbalanced as hell.  Then instead of nurfing they just put STRONGER stuff in to balance it until it spiraled into the LVL 150+ range to compete or do anything, utterly destroying the game in my opinion.  I think they went the reverse route with ac2 from what I hear with the nurf bat, but I never played it overly long to find out because it was horrible, which takes me to the bad.

The Bad:

Well the shutting down of AC2 only proves that there is a god.  This game was such an incredible let down to me and all my friends from AC1, it was truly sad.  The only good part of ac2 was the graphics, the rest of it could be flushed down the toilet.  I really don't know what the developers where thinking but right from beta it seemed doomed to fail.  They didn't stick to ANY of there AC1 roots other then some lore and some monsters.  They changed the entire combat engine to some piece of crap engine.  They changed the character building system to a cheap rip off Diablo 2's skill system.  The game felt like Diablo 2 and EQ meshed together instead of AC2.  Why would you create an entirely different game when you have something good as a predecessor, and then expect your fan basis to stay ? This just baffles me to this day.  If they would of just taken the general game mechanics from ac1 down to the world / character template / depth and just put a new graphics engine with some new tweaks, ideas, stories, quests, races, ect, It would still be going today. 
After buying AC2 3 months later I discontinued my subscription and used the cd as a coster as it was the only thing I could think of that was worth the money I spent on the game.  All though it does make a good coaster as I still use it to this day.  The sad part is I took a few more cracks at AC1 and have NEVER EVER looked back at ac2.

Truly sad it is.

But I hope that Turbine has learned a lot from there mistakes and will use it to better there future up coming games.  With that all said I can only feel for the devs as well as it would be hard to shut down such a project, and with the shutdown of AC2 I only hope that one day they will make AC3 and truly get it right.

Lessons learned

-          With a good product a person may tell 1 other person about maybe 2 if your lucky.  With A bad product the person will tell everyone he knows how much it sucks.

-          Sequels only split your subscription / population basis when you create an entirely different game.   I’ve taken the liberty of posting a link where the definition of sequel can be found - http://www.thefreedictionary.com/sequel

-          Listen to you community and try your best to stay on the fence as much as possible when it comes to the decision making time.

-          Don’t release an expansion then shutdown the game.  This just angers the locals :P

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Originally posted by hyperionjr

Does no one else care that they dodged the question concerning the number of players at the time of shut-down?

I am curious as to how many( or how little) players it takes to close down an MMO. That way I can keep my eyes open.

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http://www.mmogchart.com/ is a useful reference for that info.

current market leaders: http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart1.html
others including AC and AC2: http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart3.html

Similar story here. played AC for 2 years and loved it. Played AC2 for 6 months and finally quit when they nerfed the skill tree of my main class (defender) after lots of other annoying nerfing on each update before that. As i said in the exit survey, its the difference between viable toons grouping to complete a task, and unviable toons being forced to group to do anything.

For those of you who want a quick summary: WoW 2million, AC 37.5k, AC2 15k (at Jan 05)

Also of interest is the Lineage / Lineage 2 population flip. As L2 was massively increasing, its probably significantly because Lineage players were moving over to it. Maybe too early to tell but it does suggest that a sequel doesnt alienate your hardcore gamers by definition. Not having played either though, I couldnt make a call on how similar they are.

they should never have called it AC2, the number of people coming in appalled that it was nothing like AC1 shows people had an expectation for it to be exactly like AC1 and not being open to new ideas.

I am as open to new ideas as the next guy but when you change the entire game and the only things that stayed where some monsters name and a tiny portion or lore its not a "Squeal" its a new game.  So agian I point to the squeal definition.

Lets look at some other games that are successfull that have Squeals

Might and Magic - Changed game features, added new idea's, but kept what original concept in tact.

EQ - Changed game features, added new idea's, but kept what original concept in tact.

Now lets look at AC2

AC 2 - Kept a small portion of lore and a small portion of the creature data base.  Rest of game changed to be a poorly made mesh of D2 and EQ 2

I played the game from Beta and got nerfed out of playing like so many others.
It seems the biggest lesson they still have not learn't is to listen to the people that are paying your wages!!!
I just cancelled my DDO preorder as I really have no faith in Turbines ability to manage a Mmorg.

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One of the key lessons that we learned is the customer perception of sequels in the MMO space. They end up splitting your community more so than growing it. So they are counterproductive, unlike sequels in other game genres where they can be really successful.

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L O L. They needed to actually release a game to learn THAT? ... *shakes head in disbelief*

Yeah I wasn't criticizing. EQ2 is nothing like eq as well so it was also dismissed by a lot of players. Vanguard is in fact being seen as the true EQ2.